


above us only stars

by nightswatch



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 02:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7202903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil wants to say that he is fine. He wants to say that Nathaniel Wesninski doesn’t own a single part of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	above us only stars

Neil wants to say that he is fine. He wants to say that Nathaniel Wesninski doesn’t own a single part of him. He wants to say that he doesn’t come back to haunt him when he least expects it. Looking in the mirror is still a near impossible feat, but one that can be accomplished if need be. If he can’t stand it, he can always look away. 

He wishes he could look away from the dreams, close his eyes and pretend that he can’t see what his mind throws at him in the middle of the night.

When he wakes, it takes him mere seconds to realize that he’s safe. He recognizes his dorm room, he recognizes the glow of the streetlights that draws familiar patterns on the walls, he recognizes Kevin’s quiet snores, he recognizes the shape of Andrew, curled up in the bed across from his. 

But even the recognition doesn’t quite manage to banish the image of icy blue eyes, so much like his own, and it doesn’t banish the burning he still feels all over his skin like it was real just a second ago, and it doesn’t erase the blood and the bullets and for a moment he can’t breathe. 

Neil stumbles out of bed, foot catching in the sheets, but he doesn’t stop to check if he’s woken anyone up and bolts to the bathroom. He fumbles with the light switch, pushes at the door, not caring if it's actually closed, and ends up at the sink, cold water running over his wrists, over his fingers, until they’re numb, to distract himself from the burning feeling that still seems a little too real. He’s nauseous, his breathing is too shallow, his heartbeat too frantic, and an irrational part of him isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to go back to sleep again, not when there’s a chance that he’ll go back _there_ in his dreams. 

It was bad tonight and these days it feels like it’s only going to get worse. 

He’s gripping the edge of the sink like it’s the only thing connecting him to this world. Neil can’t look up, can’t see those blue eyes staring back at him in the mirror right now, and he can’t look down, can’t see the scarred skin on his arms, so he screws his eyes shut and tries to remember how to breathe. 

It shouldn’t be this much of a struggle.

Over the running water, he hears the creak of the bathroom door. It’s probably Kevin, about to grumble at him for waking him up. Neil doesn’t react, doesn’t look up. He’s not sure if he can.

“I’m fine,” Neil says. His voice sounds foreign to his own ears. It’ll hopefully be true in a couple of minutes. It’ll hopefully be enough to convince Kevin to go back to bed.

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Andrew says.

Not Kevin, then. 

Andrew doesn’t say anything else, but Neil knows that he’s still there, hovering in the doorway, looking at him with that carefully blasé look on his face like all of this is dreadfully boring. Knowing that Andrew is watching him isn’t helpful in the slightest. Neil grips the sink more tightly. 

Footsteps pad on the tiled floor, then the water is turned off. 

“Breathe,” Andrew says. It sounds like such a simple thing, but right now Neil can’t imagine anything harder.

“I’m fine,” Neil says again. 

“Funny,” Andrew says, “I thought I told you to stop fucking lying.” His voice is dangerously level.

Neil doesn’t reply. 

“Come on,” Andrew says. When Neil doesn’t move, he huffs impatiently. “Look at me.” Andrew’s fingers tap against Neil’s chin, lightly, just the ghost of a touch, and coaxes his face away from the mirror. “Look at me.”

Neil opens his eyes and blinks at Andrew. His brown eyes look tired, his hair is disheveled, his pyjamas are rumpled. 

Andrew’s hands curl around Neil’s wrists. “Don’t look there.” He gives his arms a tug. “Come on,” he says again.

Neil doesn’t confuse his calm for indifference anymore. Andrew says he wants nothing, feels nothing, cares about nothing, but he wouldn’t be standing here with Neil in the middle of the night, trying to talk him back into bed if that were true. 

“I’ll go back to bed in a minute,” Neil says. 

“Sure you will,” Andrews says. He pulls him out of the bathroom, turns off the light, and picks up his keys and his jacket. A jerk of the head is all it takes to get Neil to follow him out the door. 

They’re headed for the roof. Andrew opens the door for him and pushes him through, his hand ghosting over the small of Neil’s back. They came up here after practice last night, but they didn’t stay for long. They had a game the next day and Neil insisted that they both needed to get some rest. Neil wishes that tonight he’d have slept as well as last night. 

The rooftop, of course, is deserted. The breeze is pleasantly cool up here. Only their footsteps break the silence. 

“Breathe,” Andrew says, like before. It doesn't seem so unmanageable up here. Andrew pulls his cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket and then hands it to Neil. “And put that on.”

“What?”

“Or don’t,” Andrew says. He shrugs, but his eyes flicker, for the briefest of moments, to Neil’s bare arms. 

Neil pulls on Andrew’s jacket without another word. He sits down at the edge of the roof, where Andrew joins him, lighting a cigarette. After taking a drag, Andrew holds it out to Neil, waiting for him to take it. Neil always does. On any other day he would. But tonight he doesn’t need any more memories to haunt him.

So he shakes his head. He’s still too preoccupied remembering how to breathe deeply.

If Andrew is confused, he’s hiding it well. He only shrugs, takes another drag and then puts out the cigarette before it’s even burnt halfway down. Neil wants to tell him that he didn’t have to stop on his account, but he stares out at campus instead.

“Do you want to talk about the game?” Andrew asks.

Neil shakes his head again. It was a good game. The new kids are doing well for themselves. He briefly talked to Kevin about it while they were celebrating their victory. When Neil went to bed he was euphoric and he wishes he could go back there now. Back to that feeling, back to when Andrew threw his arm around him after the game when they walked off the court together. It was a victory for so many reason. Andrew gave his all. He deserves those keys to the stadium.

“I think now is the point where I should start to be extremely worried about you,” Andrew says, “if worrying was a thing I did.”

Neil laughs. He can’t even tell why he’s laughing. He doesn’t know how he’s feeling. This is Andrew, trying to help him. Neil isn’t even sure if he’s doing it consciously, but Andrew just asked him if he wanted to talk about the game and it’s so out of the ordinary that it seems comical. 

“I wouldn’t even have called you obsessive.”

“That’s a novelty,” Neil mutters.

Andrew smirks at him like he’s having the time of his life, but there’s something else underneath that smirk. Neil might be leaning a little far out of the window if he said that it was genuine concern, because Andrew said it himself, he’s not worried about him, but it’s something scarily close to that. 

“No _I hate you_ today?” Neil asks. Sitting up here feels like a dream, a much better one than the one that shook him awake earlier.

“I’m too tired to hate you right now.”

“Why didn’t you stay in bed, then?”

“It’s hard to sleep when you’re freaking out in the bathroom.”

Neil heaves a sigh. They can’t sit up here for the rest of the night, he can’t keep Andrew up, but the mere thought of going back to bed, of closing his eyes, just the possibility of going back to that dream, makes his skin crawl. He almost wants to apologize, but Andrew definitely isn’t interested in an _I’m sorry_. 

Andrew watches Neil while Neil watches nothing in particular. He can see him out of the corner of his eyes. Neil breathes. He breathes and breathes and breathes. He’s still alive. He’s still here, still in Palmetto, still playing Exy, still breathing. 

The sky is starting to get lighter in the distance. 

He should tell Andrew to go back to bed, that he’ll be fine on his own, that he just needs a few more minutes to calm himself down, but the truth is that he’s glad that Andrew is sitting next to him. Neil can’t bring himself to tell him to leave. Andrew does what he wants anyway, it doesn’t matter what Neil wants him to do.

“You’re not fine,” Andrew says as if he read his mind. “You’re not.”

“I wasn’t,” Neil says. 

“And you’re still a liar.” Andrew leans closer and reaches out, fingers splayed on Neil’s cheek. “You weren't and you aren't.”

“Takes one to know one,” Neil says.

“We’re not talking about me.”

“I know. We never talk about you.” Neil glances at Andrew, but he doesn’t look angry. They’re trading truths, that’s all. “We don’t have to talk about you,” Neil adds, “but I don’t want to talk about me either.”

“Fair enough,” Andrew says. 

Neil catches Andrew by the collar of his shirt. “Fair enough,” he echoes. He doesn’t know how to ask, but it seems that he doesn’t have to. Andrew is already leaning in and his lips are on Neil’s a split-second later.  He can’t pinpoint the day when he started needing Andrew this much. Only a few months ago Andrew told him that he wasn’t his answer and Neil still hasn’t figured out what question he was asking in the first place. There’s no point in dwelling on what they were or weren’t for each other back then. They’re not the people they were a couple of months ago, even if Andrew probably wouldn’t like to admit it. 

Neil can see that they aren’t the same. He can see it in the way Andrew talks to him, in the way he looks at him. They’ve changed. They’ve changed so much that Neil can’t help but think about all the things they could become.

He gasps when Andrew bites his bottom lip. The cool night air reminds him that he’s awake, Andrew's hands remind him that he’s alive. His fingers are tangled in Andrew’s hair and he’s holding on for dear life.

The sky has gone another shade lighter when Andrew pulls away, scrutinizing Neil’s face with narrowed eyes. “Ready to go back downstairs?” Usually, when Andrew doesn’t feel like staying up here anymore, he simply leaves. Tonight everything is a little different. They are a little different. 

Neil can’t bring himself to say yes.

Once again, he doesn’t have to. Andrew tugs at Neil’s sleeve and lies back and Neil follows his lead. Above them, a few stars are still twinkling, and Neils looks at them, thinking of nothing at all.

Andrew’s arm is pressed against his and Neil’s fingers twitch closer to Andrew’s, a feeble attempt at reaching out. 

“I think I’m awake enough to hate you now,” Andrew says and takes his hand. 

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand in reply. It’s a _thank you_ and it’s an _I’m sorry_ and it’s a hint of something else that Neil can’t put into words yet. He doesn’t try, doesn’t even look at Andrew. He stares at the fading stars and keeps breathing until he doesn’t feel trapped anymore, until he feels like closing his eyes isn’t just a promise of another nightmare waiting for him around the corner.

He gives himself a few more minutes, then he lets go of Andrew’s hand and gets up. 

Andrew trails behind him, back down the stairs, back to their dorm room. The sun hasn’t risen yet and they both need at least a few more hours of sleep. It’s Saturday and they won a game only a few hours ago. They deserve it. 

Neil shrugs off Andrew’s jacket and drapes it over the end of his bed before he slips under the covers. Instead of going back to his own bed, Andrew climbs into bed with Neil, but lies down on top of the sheets. The message is clear. He’s not planning on staying. 

Too exhausted to ask for answers that Andrew isn’t willing to give him anyway, at least not right now, Neil sighs and closes his eyes. He doesn’t think of icy blue eyes and blood and dashboard lighters burning his skin. Instead, he thinks about Andrew, keeping a careful distance, but still warm and solid, right next to him, giving him something easy to focus on.

When Neil wakes up a few hours later, he doesn’t remember Andrew leaving and he’s not sure if he imagined the gentle fingers stroking through his hair before he finally drifted back to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> I borrowed the title from a Welcome to Night Vale tweet.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are very much appreciated :)


End file.
